AlanOfTheBerg wrote:If, after study and review, they determine cameras can be put back legally, they will. We just have to wait. Working with lawyers can take months just to figure out the simplest of things sometimes.

On the other hand, they could just decide they have other things to do while we wait. The problem is that some of us might have faith that there is study and review going on. Others may not have so much faith. This communication problem is one that waze could easily solve.

We have just removed from the map all the speed cameras in Denmark, Switzerland and Germany due to it being illegal in these countries.

we are examining ways to make Waze compliant with French law as well

Thanks,

Shirli

Shirli,

it would have been nice to discuss this with the community in these countries before taking such drastic measures. Waze has just established channeled community communications.

Best regards,

Detlev

+1 for the comment on talking to the community first.

Especially considering, that as for Germany at least, that decision is based on wrong information. The device/app itself is *NOT* illegal (which it is in switzerland for instance), and basically *every* navigational system sold in Germany has that function (TomTom, Navigon, you name them) in Germany. It is illegal (in theory) to use it, but AFAIK that's true for a huge list of countries.

DIsabling it in Waze for Germany is a *HUGE* mistake, and should be undone ASAP.

BTW, you forgot France. It *IS* illegal there (the device, not the usage), and also Liechtenstein. But Germany is just plain wrong.

Just for the records, let's keep the facts straight guys. Neither TomTom nor Navigon offer any type of warning in Switzerland, so there definitely is a legal issue there. In Germany however, bot DO offer speedcam alerts. The details have been given here, there is absolutely no legal problem FOR WAZE in Germany.

Yes, and there's the *big* difference compeared to germany. In switzerland, the device or application itself is illegal to start with, and it's forbidden by law to develop, sell, or make available such devices.

It is *totally* different in Germany. The device itself and to sell or offer it is *perfectly* legal. What is not allowed is to *use* it *while driving*. That said, there is no reason for Waze (or any other manufacturer of such systems) not to offer it. It's totally up to the driver (and as of today, not a single driver in germany ever has received a ticket for using such a device).

So I ask again: Waze, woukd you reconsider that decision for Germany *please*?

Yeah, that's pretty ironic. *If* there really would be a legal issue here, it would still exist unchanged.

and another thing: german laws on speed cams have been the same for a very long time now. how come waze came up with that right now?

Obviously through Google. Consider there *really* would be a legal issue for the manufacturer of the app. It would have never affected Waze, as Waze as no official office in the EU, let alone the individual countries. Even if they would break german (or swiss) law, nobody could do anything against them.

Totally different story now they're part of google. Google *has* official offices in the EU and in Switzerland, so immediately after the aqcuisition, there now could be legal action against them.

Irrelevant. Waze is not "only" for speepcams either. The question is what is it's main function, not what it's called. Otherwise I start selling radar detection devices that can also open beer cans.

So, if waze *believes* there's a legal issue with its speedcam function, then that exactly same issue *would* exist with the Police function. They removed one, hurt the community, but did not remove the other one, e.g they didn't change a single thing about the legal issue they believe they attacked.

Kuhlkatz wrote:You guys also seem to forget that Waze 'stores' your drives, which other navigation systems do not. How long would it be before the operators of mobile or fixed cameras gets the bright idea to sue Waze or Google as the parent company for 'loss of income' due to the camera warnings.

Not sure about your country, but over here, forever. That would be against the constitution, and violate probably about a dozen EU privacy laws.

I've always been curious how could waze have kept the cameras in Germany when everybody there knows it's illegal to even have software to inform about cameras installed. I almost had my scary moment when I had trapster installed and the police was quite curious about my old nokia device on the dashboard, but was lucky they were just hunting people drunk from the bars and didn't bother me.

As far as I can remember, for completeness, radar detection hardware is strictly forbidden, and software that announces cameras, fixed or mobile, are also forbidden in some countries - germany being the case - and over there, according to my rough german law translation and the comments from my friends, even having the software installed but not being open could be used against us. I may be wrong on this, I've been back to Portugal for two years now.

I'm mentioning this because there may be the case that removing the cameras from the map is not enough. There may be a need to even remove the camera report and maybe even the police report from the client, but I'm sure some native German can explain this better...

wasserkatze11 wrote:As you can read here (in German) http://www.navi-magazin.de/grundlagen-w ... r-im-navi/Gadgets who's only function it's to warn the user(s) are illegal. When the function is beside the functionality as a navigation-system (optional) then there was never an illegal action.

Thank you! I think this was the missing piece that made my German friends warn me to not even have Trapster installed in Germany, because Trapster is exclusively for radar detection.

On the other hand my rough German can't parse the whole text to reach a conclusion if a navigation software with a radar database is still legal or not. All I can read is that either the police ignores it (if you're stopped, I'm sure it's because you're at 200 at a 100 zone), or they will be nice and instead of destroying the iPhone, will just ask to remove the app.

So if the german layers can't give a concrete answer, how can Waze risk it?